Never delete emails? You might be a digital hoarder

Lifestyle

To John McGillion

Apr 18, 2023 | 7am

The notorious scammer Sam Bankman-Fried (the notorious SBF) could be a digital hoarder.

According to recent information Business Insider Reportthe former FTX CEO’s laptop is flooded with so much data that FBI officials are working overtime to analyze the content.

But SBF isn’t the only one clearly reluctant to set out with a huge amount of data.

In fact, digital hoarding — a subtype of hoarding disorder in which excessive amounts of digital material are collected and difficult to let go — growing problem USA and beyond.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) recognizes hoarding disorders as: mental illness.

Okay, some scholars are asking When the time comes to add digital hoarding to the psychiatry bible.

according to work done by technical researchers Maitrick Katariah and his colleagues at digital product engineering firm Simform, the average American has at least 40 apps installed on their phone, but uses less than 50% of them.

millions of Americans 1,000+ unread emails.

and about 60% of Americans Never delete photos Or video from your digital device.

Dr. Darshana Cedera, Associate Dean and Director Digital Enterprise Lab Australia’s Southern Cross University warns that digital hoarding is on the rise and the consequences could be severe.

his research, he said, It shows that the collection and storage of digital content tends to increase as the “number of technological footprints” increases.

Dr. Cedera announced many papers About this obstacle, it says there appears to be a positive correlation between the number of social media platforms users use and the amount of content they store.

Additionally, his team observed a strong relationship between the number of storage platforms used (Google Drive, iCloud, etc.) and the increase in digital hoarding.

Not all generations are equally affected when it comes to this fairly new phenomenon.

In one study, Dr. Cedera and his colleagues compared the digital hoarding behavior of millennials born after 1980 to Generation X, which they defined as the generation born between 1965 and 1980.

“We found that both groups exhibited symptoms of digital hoarding,” he said.

However, millennials showed a “much stronger propensity for digital hoarding.”

According to Cedera, it’s no surprise to expect even higher levels of hoarding behavior among younger generations, especially digital natives.

Digital hoarding affects mental health.

“When you suffer from the symptoms of digital hoarding [constant acquisition, difficulty of discarding, clutter propensity] It is likely that he or she will experience an adverse mental or psychological condition,” Cedera said.

Doctor Barbara Perdigan Stumpfa Brazilian psychiatrist who also has studied the dangers of disability“Comorbidities are common,” especially with major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, and even attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), she told The Post.

But according to psychologist Dr., not all digital hoarders are created equal. Nick Neave.

A British scholar told the Post: research A study led by Dr. Kelly McKellar and published in the journal Interacting with Computers in 2020 found that digital hoarding is relatively common, but there are different “types” of digital hoarding. Yes, and their hoarding seems to be caused by a variety of reasons. ”

These groups were categorized as follows:

anxious

Anyone worried about deleting information they may need in the future, either as evidence or as a reminder. (This “just in case” mentality is often a belief set of physical hoarding.)

Compliance driven

Users who hold digital files to comply with policies and procedures (business, government, etc.).

liberation led

This category is a compilation of people who are completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of emails and files they have accumulated, but choose not to delete in case they accidentally delete something important.

collection led

These people keep their data organized, but they rarely delete anything other than obvious junk mail. Especially at work, we tend to use external devices to back up our files and see this role as part of our identity.

In fact, “a lot of digital hoarding is driven by the workplace: endless emails and circular documents with people who don’t know their data retention, storage and deletion policies,” says Dr. Neave. “People often send files to everyone out of fear of ‘missing people’ or being seen as not doing a ‘good job.

“This creates an environment where most employees hold digital data they don’t need, which can be a big problem in terms of data protection. You do not need.”

As Sakshi Udavant, Psychology and Technology Writer pointed out last yeardigital hoarding seems to have a particularly dark side: vengeance.

the study show Individuals regularly confess to hoarding files with the intention of weaponizing them in the future.

Revenge porn, a form of digital abuse in which individuals share sexually explicit images without the consent of the person in them, is one of the most egregious examples of this weaponization.